Saturday, September 22, 2012

Granny B works with a lovely lady called Jenny. We buy
all our eggs from Jenny because she uses soy free layer and we know that her
chooks are raised happily at home. Well today we were lucky enough to get an
invite to visit Jenny, her chooks and her vegie garden. We are intent on
getting our own chooks now we are settled at the new house and what better
introduction than meeting the chookies who give us our eggs now :-)

Jenny and her husband let Little B feed the chooks by
hand and look for eggs. Talk about love at first sight – he was very
disappointed to hear that we wouldn’t be taking said chickens home today, but
after assuring him we would get our own, he bumbled of into the garden to dust
bathe with them LOL.

They also showed me around their vegie garden and
fruit trees. 14 years young, the garden has 24 productive fruit trees (and that’s
not including the 5 kinds of berries they also have). They have a very
successful avocado tree and in a climate similar to hours I was overjoyed
to hear they didn’t need another to cross pollinate nor has it grown to immense
proportions (two bits of advice that discouraged me putting in a avocado this year).

They were also keen to show me their propagating shed
and how they raise their seedlings. I quite liked this little gadget from Diggers – a
Bottle Top Waterer. Obviously we wouldn’t use a plastic water bottle, but it
would go great on an old oil pourer we have.

It was also great to see polypipe covering a vegie garden in real
life. I’ve always wondered how sturdy they would be in the wind we get, but
Jenny & co have a similar problem and they hold up beautifully in the wild
windy weather.

And who could resist the view. Sitting in the sunshine, drinking coffee and eating home-made cake and muffins,
it was simply beautiful.

And we didn’t come home empty handed – a dozen eggs, 6
strawberry plants and a baby peach tree one of many they have self seed. They
tell me that they found these peach trees to grow lashings of fruit.

It was a fabulous morning – I really do love meeting like minded
people and learning from people who have been gardening for many more years
than me.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Yesterday was quite an interesting day…apparently superheroes live
teepees. Really? Who knew?

So my job as the mum of a superhero was to provide said tepee. There are
some gorgeous ones you can buy these days but they are mainly plastic poles and
made in china. So instead I perused patterns – our teepee is an amalgamation of
Spotlight, The Crafty Minx and A Beautiful Mess. Though My Poppet has a great explanation about tying the poles together.

I mainly adapted these to make sure the teepee would fit into Little B's bedroom because I found the patterns were mostly too small (more for toddlers) or way too big (better for outside).

It was surprisingly easy to make – and it took about 3 hours from start
to finish. All up it cost me $65 with the most expensive part being the wooden
poles. I used plain cotton drill for the teepee itself rather than patterned
fabric as it lends itself to changing interests. Though I’m hoping to get some
of these robot fabric decals from Love Mae as Little B adores robots as much as
superheroes. In fact we have seen a few superhero robots around here.

Monday, September 17, 2012

:: Canoeing, canoeing, canoeing – I opted out this
time because of my hip but the boys were in and out of the water for 3 hours
(there was lots of adventuring to be had on the shores)

:: I sat watching the boys, listening to the water, chatting with other canoers/kayakers and enjoying the Spring
Edition of Peppermint Magazine. Worth buying just for the beautiful cover if
you ask me :-)

:: Making Blueberry Cream Cheese Icecream. It’s
delicious…the recipe says to mix the blueberries through the icecream at the
last stage but we decided to add frozen ones when serving.

As you can see here and here, we started removing plastic nearly 3 years ago after I read Chemical Free Kids & Slow Death by Rubber Duck. But
after reading these two new books plus blogs like Mummy Footprint, I’m renewed in my horror at
the pervasiveness of plastics in our bodies and our lives. I thought I was
pretty up with plastics but have found that in some ways I am so not!! Then I
saw this episode of Catalyst and was again inspired / had renewed energy to
make further plastic free changes to our lifestyle.

This is a photo of my plastic waste for the last week
(though it doesn’t include anything that could go into the recycle bin).
Beth Terry really makes you think about what to do with this trash.

So what to do?? I really enjoyed Bec’s post today on A Less Complicated Life. How we do some things simply
because they make life easier so that we can spend time on the things we want to do and think are important like
gardening, bread making and the like and it made me think about the things I do (along with the
trash) and about the things I could change…

:: I’d fallen into thinking our 1 tin of canned tuna
per week was ok because a) Little B didn’t eat it (no BPA exposure for him) and b) because we bought Fish 4 Ever which is sustainably fished. After watching the
Catalyst episode we no longer eat canned tuna.

:: I’ve also packed away our breadmaker into the shed. I
make all our bread by hand (using a bulk River Cottage recipe) but if I ran out
of time or we had a busy week, I would resort to making the dough in the
breadmaker and shaping by hand and baking in our oven. After re-reading about
Teflon and its effect on brains, this is a thing of the past. Now I buy bread
by Phillipa’s as a last resort as it is made by hand.

:: Which leads to
the unrecyclable plastics in my photo. Phillipa’s bread comes in a plastic bag
:-( but I have discovered these great recycle bins by Red Project outside a local Coles where
you can recycle plastic bags not accepted by your local council. Think bread
bags, pasta bags, cereal bags, fresh produce bags, reusable green bags. These
are then made into recycled outdoor furniture for schools. So I feel much more
comfortable recycling my photographed plastic rubbish this way rather than
sending it to landfill.

:: I’m also rethinking (yet again) what I purchase and
aiming for products packaged in paper or glass. Plus we now keep all glass
jars/ bottles that come into our house.

And oddly enough, I think this avoidance of plastic
just encourages me to keep living the way we do – cooking from scratch,
visiting local farmers markets, supporting local business, growing our own etc.
Plus to be honest, why go to all the effort of growing my own organic vegies,
if I’m poisoning my family in worse ways.

Do I think we need yet another thing to beat ourselves up about?? No - because as Bec covers beautifully, sometimes you just need to focus on the things you think are important. Little B has co-ordination disorder that was caused by a change to his neural pathways either in utero or early in life - knowing that these plastics can change brains, neural pathways and the like makes removing plastic something I feel is important. Did all those meals I reheated in plastic for lunches at work whilst pregnant make a difference? What about all the baby food I reheated in plastic because I was industrially making my own? I'll never know but I can make different informed choices now :-)

So for now, I’ve also decided to try one new thing a
month from Beth Terry’s book. Her blog My Plastic-Free Life is also a great support. So for
September, I’m decided to document all my plastic as a visual aid for me to
know how much actually comes in the door and why I’ve made that choice.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

What better way to celebrate Fathers Day than by
launching our new canoe?? Didn’t hurt that the weather was beautiful and sunny
too :-)

First up we made Daddy’s favourite biscuits.

Then we launched

And the day wouldn’t have been complete without a
little daddy solo canoe to try out all his moves (and make sure it wouldn’t sink
LOL - it's not in the best pre-loved condition but we had hoped we made it sound enough for this foray)

We canoed for 3 hours and had a ball. We were both
surprised that Little B just took to it – paddled a bit, stopped an
investigated the shores, enjoyed all the interesting animals and sights – and then
sailed sticks and collected rocks while we packed up

It has inspired the potential interest in a future canoe camping trip.

Happy Fathers Day, my love – you are absolutely
the best daddy I could have wished for our babe.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

NOURISH: We’ve been cocooning with the latest wintry
blast of cold weather – think lots of Vegetarian and Vegan Pizzas as well as batches
of Vegetarian (tomato free) Lasagna.

PREPARE: I made a batch of pear jam
when we were gifted a small box of odds and sods pears. I’ve been making large
batches of slices courtesy of my CWA cookbook for kinder, so Little B has a bit
of variety in his lunchbox (think Banana Slice with Lemon Icing and a healthy
faux marshmallow slice).

REDUCE: After this months reading,
I’m now keeping every single jar that comes into our place and trying to find a
use for it. I loved a suggestion by a local CSA to use them to make grab and go
salad jars for summer. Quick shake and dressing is sorted.

GREEN: I’ve started making our own
dishwasher powder (recipe courtesy of My Healthy Green Family). It works really well and we haven’t had
any problems with our dishes. I tried making our own washing powder again but
it just doesn’t seem to work (things just arent clean) – not sure what I’m doing wrong there.

Our grid
connect flat panel solar was finally connected and we’ve been generating at
least 3 kwh per day in pretty crappy weather. Plus our lovely solar tracker
finally has all her panels – now to get her hooked up to the house!!

GROW: I’ve planted out two kinds of potatoes in
grow bags and started sowing seeds (squash, pumpkins and capsicums). Today Mr B
and I mapped out where future beds will go and it looks like I will get an
extra 1.5 beds for planting this year..yay!!

CREATE: Sadly I’ve done very
little creating this month – unless you count playing with recipes in the
kitchen.

DISCOVER: This month my reading
has been mainly on toxic old plastic. How bad it is, how to get rid of it and
different alternatives to tryout. We’ve been removing plastic for the last 2.5
years but I figure if you only learn one new thing it’s worth it. I really
loved Beth Terry’s new book “Plastic Free: How I kicked the plastic habit and how you can too" and aim to try out some of her suggestions over
the next month or two.

The
other key book I read this month was The Coming Famine: The global food crisis
and what we can do to avoid it by Julian Cribb. Talk about an eye opener – up there
with The Great Disruption by Paul Fielding. Lots of things to think about and
lots of changes coming to the House of B because of it.

Little B
and I have been reading Mr Galliano’s Circus by Enid Blyton. My favourite fun
reads have been Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness (the much awaited sequel to
Discovery of Witches) and The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman. The Dovekeepers was
a really challenging read because it is quite dark and cruel towards women but
at the same time really interesting because they characters feel quite real.

ENHANCE: We bartered in conjunction
with our neighbours and engaged a local person to put up our back fence. Took a
lot longer than the mainstream route but we finally have a secure back fence
and privacy from the street (long story but you could see all of our backyard
through our behind neighbour’s front yard from the street).

ENJOY: Little B and I have been
having experiment days as he is really passionately interested in inventions
and science. It’s been so fun working with him as we’ve grown crystals,
balanced coloured water, made old fashioned tin can telephones and created his
own water collector invention. We’ve also been learning / remembering to play
checkers/draughts as a family. Makes for a great game after dinner :-)